AACM50

The grand finale of the celebration of the AACM’s 50th anniversary, presented by the S.E.M. Ensemble in partnership with the Interpretations series, features major works for symphony and chamber orchestra by composers associated with the AACM – Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, George Lewis and Henry Threadgill – as well as works by John Cage, Christian Wolff and Petr Kotik. April 28 includes a duo by Mitchell and Lewis (Lewis’ Bound) and on April 29, a rare performance by the distinguished improvising trio of Abrams, Lewis, and Mitchell.

The S.E.M. Ensemble’s Reading of New Compositions was initiated in 1997 and has continued, every season, to the present. During the three-day workshop each composer is provided with time and space to work directly with the conductor and musicians. The workshop culminates in a reading-performance, open to the public. This year’s reading includes works by an international group of composers who reside in the New York area and the Midwest: Colin Tucker, Chung Eun Kim, Yang Ming and Tai-Kuang Chao. It also includes an accordion, trumpet and clarinet trio by Australian/Sri Lankan composer Nirmali Fenn. Additionally Ushio Torikai's new work Remember for baritone and orchestra will be performed.

“There may have been two [masterpieces] among the five works presented [at NODO]. Kotik's was certainly one, proving that he could craft a light and thoroughly entertaining work from Stein's texts while staying true to his rigid sensibilities.”

The Wire, London, November 2014

The S.E.M. Ensemble returns to Paula Cooper Gallery for the American premiere of American/Czech composer Petr Kotik’s Master-Pieces (2014). The staged, 60-minute chamber opera features a libretto by Kotik, based on writings by Gertrud Stein and adapted to the stage by director Michael Rau. Commissioned by the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in collaboration with New Opera Days Ostrava (NODO), Czech Republic, Master-Pieces received its world premiere at NODO last June. The operamarks Kotik’s return to Stein’s rhythmic, poetic prose, after Many Many Women and There is Singularly Nothing, both composed in the 70’s.

A meditation on the nature of art and the act of creation,the opera draws from two works by Gertrud Stein – her 1936 lecture, What Are Masterpieces and Why Are So Few of Them and excerpts from The Wars I Have Seen, her diary from the last three years of WWII, published in 1945. For Stein, “the masterpiece has nothing to do with human nature or with identity, it has to do with the human mind and entity, that is with a thing in itself and not in relation.” Kotik’s opera develops this seeming simple idea by asking: Is what one is doing about the self (identity) or the work (entity)?

“I wanted to go beyond the spectacle of a musical performance to investigate a meaningful subject matter within a theatrical form,” Kotik notes. “The theatrical energy comes from the very questions raised by Stein, as she continuously veers off her subject to contemplate and think about issues of creative process and the relationship between the self and the world.” The opera is a hybrid between theater and music; and the words – sometimes sung and sometimes spoken – strive to retain the poetry of Stein’s language while opening various layers of meanings.

The premiere will take place at Paula Cooper Gallery, located at 534 West 21st Street, NY, on Wednesday, December 17, 2014, 7:30pm. Tickets: Advance sale $15/10; at the door $20/15. www.semensemble.org/tickets. More info: (718) 488-7659 or info@semensemble.org

2014 opens with a concert honouring Christian Wolff in his 80th year and showing the long and close collaboration between Wolff and Petr Kotik, who, with the Czech Republic’s OstravskaÅL banda, makes his first visit to Huddersfield.

Presenting a cross-section of the music of Ostravska banda and New York’s S.E.M. Ensemble, with an important contribution by Thomas Buckner, the concert includes Wolff’s Trust, premiered by Ostravska banda at WDR Cologne’s 2013 ‘Ensemble Europa’ series, along with new pieces by Cigler, Mincek and Kotik. Smolka’s music further ties the programme to the biennial Ostrava Days, where all the composers have been working since 2001. The programme is completed by John Cage’s previously presumed lost and recently rediscovered version of Wolff’s For Six or Seven Players (1959), given to Kotik in 1964.

Thomas Buckner presents a program of pieces written especially for him by Robert Ashley (1930-2014) in their 30+ years of working together. Works include the stand-alone pieces ‘World War III, Just the Highlights’ and ‘Tract’, and three completely re-conceived concert versions of arias from the opera “Atalanta, Acts of God”: ‘The Producer Speaks’, ‘Odalisque’, and ‘Mystery of the River’, in its New York premiere. With Tom Hamilton, Joseph Kubera, Pauline Kim Harris, Conrad Harris, JD Parran and the SEM Ensemble. Co-sponsored by Roulette and Performing Artservices.

The concert opens with two monumental yet extremely poetic pieces by Jürg Frey and Michael Pisaro. After the intermission, Boon will play his own contribution to “John’s Book”: a collection of solo pieces by all Wandelweiser composers, dedicated to pianist John McAlpine on his 65th birthday. Jürg Frey’s opus number 1 in the Wandelweiser catalogue, by now a classic of contemporary piano music “Sam Lazaro Bros.” concludes the program.

ABOUT THE PIANIST:

Dutch pianist and composer Dante Boon (b. 1973) has been playing and composing new music from an early age. He worked with, among others, Tom Johnson, Samuel Vriezen, Antoine Beuger, Jürg Frey and James Fulkerson on recording projects and first concert performances. His solo CD "cage.frey.vriezen.feldman.ayres.johnson manion" appeared in 2010 at Edition Wandelweiser Records to positive reviews. In the making are CD's with recordings of two of Boon's vocal compositions by German soprano Irene Kurka, Feldman's For John Cage with American violinist Andrew McIntosh and chamber pieces by Jürg Frey. As a concert pianist, Dante Boon has appeared at many concert venues and festivals across Europe and the USA. Boon's compositions are published by Edition Wandelweiser.